Chapter 94
Chapter 94
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 94
Chapter Title: Archers in the Ruins
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'Sneak out quietly.'
If the forces on the fourth basement were tied up, they could buy him enough time to escape.
Right now, the operators were frantically deleting the Ironforge Gang's data and files.
There was so much material that erasing it all would take considerable time.
Orca quietly slipped back, making sure the operators didn't notice.
'Just you wait, you Heaven-Splitting Sword Clan bastards!'
With that, Orca vanished from the control room.
"Captain! What about the executives and superhumans we sent to the fourth floor...?"
One of the operators turned around mid-deletion, then clamped his mouth shut.
There was no one where Orca should have been.
'He bolted.'
'Already?'
The three operators immediately grasped the situation.
"Hey, we should bail too!"
"That coward ditched us first."
The two operators moved the instant Orca disappeared.
But the last one muttered in a dazed voice.
"We haven't finished the job yet..."
"You idiot!"
"You wanna stick around deleting files now? Run if you wanna live!"
The other two yelled at him in frustration.
The captain had already fled—what did orders matter now?
Survival came first.
And so, the three operators abandoned the control room and fled.
Shin Yu-hyun scanned the surroundings upon reaching the fourth basement.
'A training ground?'
Surprisingly, the fourth basement was vast. One side featured a simulated ruined street.
As if designed for urban combat, there were rows of weathered four- and five-story buildings, with scattered wrecked cars on the two-lane road.
Shin Yu-hyun slowly stepped into the wasteland-like training area with Dia.
At that moment—
Shweeeek!
A sharp whistle cut through the air from somewhere.
Shin Yu-hyun swiftly thrust his hand toward the source.
Zzzzing!
A Distortion Field bloomed in front of his palm.
Shuuuuk! Pfook!
Ripples spread across the spatial warp right before him, bending the arrow aimed at Shin Yu-hyun sharply before it plunged into the concrete floor.
'An archer?'
Shin Yu-hyun smirked.
Seemed like an Ironforge Gang archer was hiding inside one of the buildings.
Given how it pierced the concrete, at least a 4-star caliber.
'Not bad. An executive?'
Who knew they could infuse mana into arrows at this range.
Typically, imbuing weapons with mana required constant contact.
That's why most superhumans were swordsmen, spearmen, gauntlet or knuckle fighters, or warriors wielding axes and hammers.
In contrast, ranged archers struggled early on.
Maintaining mana in arrows over time was tough.
Especially at low ranks, the mana would dissipate mid-flight.
Archers had it rough growing up.
But at 4-star, when they could reliably infuse arrows, they became "royal returnees"—true powerhouses.
"Prepare."
Kreeeak!
At Shin Yu-hyun's command, the skeleton archers nocked arrows toward the direction of the incoming shot.
"Fire."
Shoooosh!
Ten mana-infused arrows streaked through the sky.
Pfook! Pfook!
They punched straight through the building walls.
The skeletons were currently 4-star level.
With ample prepared mana.
And that wasn't all.
'Skeletons can cultivate heart methods too.'
Once Shin Yu-hyun learned this, he taught them the Heaven-Splitting Heart Method. Now the skeleton archers could infuse their arrows with mana using it.
As a result, the sniper who targeted him moments ago fell silent under the skeletons' counterattack.
Impaled through the building wall, dead without a scream.
Shin Yu-hyun resumed walking into the ruined training ground.
Shoooosh!
This time, mana arrows rained from all directions.
But weaker than the first.
Just reaching him was all the mana could manage.
"Dia, stay close."
"Yes!"
Dia, with Ka-mang-i perched on her head, stuck tight to Shin Yu-hyun's leg. Kairon and Poongseul waited in the shadow realm.
For sudden ambushes.
Thud thud thud!
Dozens of steel arrows laden with mana battered the Distortion Field.
But the result was the same as the first. They veered off the spatial warp and clattered to the ground without hitting him.
"Scattered all around?"
Shin Yu-hyun clicked his tongue, eyeing the arrow origins.
Ironforge archers hid in buildings and rooftops, surrounding him.
About twenty, judging by the arrow count—roughly 3-star level.
"Annoying bunch."
Their numbers didn't matter.
But scattered everywhere, even using archers would take time to clear them out.
He couldn't hunt them down one by one with the skeletons either.
But—
"Hunt them down and eliminate."
Shin Yu-hyun ordered the skeletons. One saber and one lancer per pair scattered in all directions.
Toward where the arrows had come from.
'Won't take long.'
The sabers and lancers dashed like the wind with their lightness skills.
They'd wipe out the Ironforge archers and return soon.
Crash!
Then, glass shattered from a building beside the road where he stood.
Figures in black hooded coats wielding jet-black spears leaped down, encircling Shin Yu-hyun and his twenty archers.
Ironforge superhuman spearmen.
'Aiming for the gap without sabers and lancers?'
Thirty spearmen surrounded him.
And not just them. Dead ahead stood a man in his early thirties, clad in a red hooded coat with a red spear.
One of Ironforge's executives: Akai Sasori, the Red Scorpion.
"You filthy worm! Do you even know where you are?!"
Sasori thrust his red spear at Shin Yu-hyun the moment he landed.
Red Curse-Poison Spear: Akad.
An Exceptional Rare-grade weapon.
Clang!
Reactivating Body Strengthening Technique against the Ironforge ambush, Shin Yu-hyun drew the flaming demon sword Levatein and deflected the red curse-poison spear.
At the same time, the spearmen charged the archers.
Kakak!
The archers hastily blocked spears with their bows.
Kyuu!
Then Ka-mang-i on Dia's head extended two tentacles, stretching its shadow along.
Ssssh.
In an instant, thirty sabers and thirty lancers with glowing blue eyes emerged from the shadows.
Shin Yu-hyun had activated Split Thought to parry Akad while ordering Ka-mang-i to summon more skeletons.
"Gasp!"
"Wh-what?!"
"Skeletons out of nowhere?!"
The Ironforge spearmen attacking the archers recoiled in shock.
They'd used their archers as bait to divide Shin Yu-hyun's skeletons.
Then ambushed to corner him.
Who expected more skeletons to pop out!
"Did necromancers have skills like this?"
"No corpses—how...?"
The spearmen were baffled.
The necromancers they knew summoned undead from corpses.
Skeletons rising in a corpse-free zone? Unheard of.
Grimacing, the Ironforge spearmen engaged the newly summoned sabers and lancers from the shadow realm. Meanwhile, Shin Yu-hyun charged at Sasori.
Fist clenched tight.
Bam!
"Urk!"
Having parried the curse-poison spear upward, Sasori's front was wide open.
Shin Yu-hyun seized the moment, dashing in and smashing his fist into the man's face.
Sasori spat blood and white shards from his mouth.
The punch had torn his gums and shattered teeth.
"You bastard!"
Furious to his core, Sasori twisted his face and lunged murderously at Shin Yu-hyun.
But Shin Yu-hyun was far angrier.
Ironforge had killed his clan members. Trash like them had forced him to bury his second brother, Shin Cheol-jin, with his own hands.
And he knew what they'd done to the kids and Poongseul.
"Are you even human?!"
The gloves of Hades, god of the underworld: Quinear.
Black light flowed from Shin Yu-hyun's legendary gauntlets, transforming into elbow-length gauntlets.
He swung the now-gauntleted Quinear at Sasori, who was swinging the curse-poison spear.
Clang!
A clear metallic ring echoed.
Quinear had batted the curse-poison spear upward.
"Wh-what?!"
Sasori's face twisted in shock.
He couldn't comprehend.
What was his weapon?
An Exceptional Rare-grade spear that inflicted curses and poison.
A vicious tool that could doom foes with one hit.
Yet this guy deflected it—not once, but twice!
And now, those gauntlets were grabbing Akad?
'No!'
Sasori realized his front was exposed.
With Akad locked in the gauntlets.
No defense against an incoming attack.
"N-no! Stop!"
"No mercy."
Shin Yu-hyun smashed Sasori's face with the Levatein-gripping gauntlet.
Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!
"Urk! Gah! Guhuk!"
Sasori tried blocking with his free arm, but it was futile.
The steel-hard gauntlet shattered his wrist bones on contact.
His face turned to mush.
"St-stop... Sp-spare me..."
With all his teeth gone in seconds, Sasori begged in a lisping wheeze. But Shin Yu-hyun's onslaught didn't stop.
Sasori had been one of the executives who subdued Poongseul before.
Yet even that didn't sate Shin Yu-hyun's rage.
'Ka-mang-i, bring out Poongseul.'
He sent the mental command.
Kyuu!
Ssssh!
Ka-mang-i's shadow darkened the floor.
From it emerged a massive spirit beast with white fur.
"Wh-what's this?!"
The sudden giant spirit beast left spearmen—and even Sasori, mid-beating—stunned.
But Sasori quickly realized.
"N-no way?"
The monster that nearly annihilated Ironforge in the past. Blood Wolf: Hyeolrang.
Now in its white-furred Baekrang form, right before Sasori's eyes.
"Hyu... hyung?!"
Sasori muttered in disbelief at the Baekrang.
Grrr.
Baekrang—Poongseul—looked down at Sasori and bared its white fangs in a grin.
It had spotted its old tormentor.